7PM Ed Miliband said today that he fears that people are now working harder for less and that people on modest incomes are going to be hardest hit by the coalition’s cuts? Is he right? Is a cost of living crisis about to hit the middle classes?

8PM We’ll be broadcasting live the third of our LBC/RSA debates live from the Great Room of the RSA in front of 200 invited guests. James O’Brien will chair the debate and I’ll host your reaction to what our experts say on the subject of the debate – A future fair for all.

9PM LBC Book Club: I’ll be talking to Katharine Birbalsingh, author of To Miss with Love and to Angela Saini who’s written a book called Geek Nation: How Indian Science is Taking Over the World.

7PM How important to you is the bobby on the beat? This programme has exclusively learned that Boris Johnson will launch a new scheme tomorrow which gives local communities two bobbies for the price of one. For every new police officer paid for by a local council, the Mayor will pay for another one.

8PM It’s Polling Day in the Irish general election. Three million voters in the republic will choose a new government to replace the one led by Fianna Fail’s Brian Cowen. We’ll be speaking to experts and asking what a new government will mean for Ireland, for Britain and for Europe. Are you a member of the Irish community living in London. Have you voted? Ring me and tell me who you voted for and why.

9PM How important are books to children? The government has halved the funding for the Book Trust scheme? If we really want our children to read, is this a false economy? What books inspired you as a child?And if you have a film, play, concert or show to review then do phone in on 0845 60 60 973 between 8 and 9.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

1. Ed Howker exposes Yes to AV funding.2. Tom Clougherty gives us an Austrian School insight into inflation.3. Tim Montgomerie takes a detailed look at the new No10 operation.4. Andrew Haldenby wants more reform of the Civil Service.5. John Redwood explains why UKIP should not support AV.6. Anna Racoon digs a little further into the "technical problems" of BA flights.7. Direct Democracy want Eric Pickles to go further.8. Andy Mayer thinks we underestimate the grey terror at our peril.9. Ben Brogan lays out the reasons why Cameron should care about AV.10. David Osler reports that the socialists are still supporting Gadaffi.11. Paul Richards has realised The Life of Brian was a satire of the Left.12. Tim Dodds laments the loss of Iain Martin, and looks to the future.

7PM Sorry. Are you glad that politicians have at last learnt the art of saying sorry? And it’s just as well because our government’s performance in the last 24 hours over the Libyan evacuation has been shocking. Does Cameron’s apology go far enough? Whose head would you like to see roll? And also on Libya, what on earth is the point of the UN or NATO if they can’t intervene and protect innocent lives? Isn’t it time these international organisations grew a backbone, otherwise we have to ask if they serve any role?

8PM Immigration. Figures out today show a huge rise in net immigration. In the globalised world we live in, is it time we bowed to the inevitable and recognised that actually, there’s very little we can do about it and that we just need to learn how to cope?

7PM Figures out today show that public sector workers are a third more likely to take a day off sick than their private sector counterparts. Why is this? Is it because the monitoring systems in the public sector are lax? Are public sector workers innately lazier or is it more complex than that? Do public sector workers suffer more stress? Are they more fearful of job cuts than their private sector equivalents?

8PM The government announced today that divorcing couple will be referred to mediation services to sort out their disputes before they are allowed to use the courts. Is this something that looks like common sense or is it just a ruse to cut the number of cases going through our full to the brim courts? Do you fear the real consequence will mean that divorcing couples will no longer be entitled to legal aid?

9PM LBC Parliament with Steve Norris (former Conservative MP for Epping and London mayoral candidate), Simon Hughes, (Deputy Leader of the LibDems and MP for Southwark & Bermondsey) and Peter Watt (former General Secretary of the Labour Party)

8PM David Cameron says we were wrong to support dictators in the past. Is he right? Is he really intimating we're going to move towards a so-called ethical foreign policy? But shouldn't Britain's foreign policy be based on hard headed realism. Guests: Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Douglas Murray.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

After two months of blogging silence, I make a one day only return to the medium, to implore you to listen to a six minute chunk of a phone in I did last night on Prisoner's rights. A prison officer called Charlie phoned in. What he said amazed me. No wonder prisoners think they've got the upper hand nowadays. Listen to this and then tell me if we have got our priorities right. I'm about to email Prisons minister Crispin Blunt to ask him to have a listen too - and then do something about the matters Charlie raises.

For those of you who can't be arsed to listen to it, Charlie tells us all the words prison officers are now reportedly banned from using. Political correctness, it seems, is now an integral part of the HM Prison Service.

Friday, February 18, 2011

1. Neil O'Brien thinks the Welfare Bill is a step in the right direction.2. The ASI wonder why Caroline Spellman is apologising for being right.3. Iain Martin explains why he thinks the PM is joining the No to AV battle.4. Tony Dolphin is optimistic about retail sales, for now.5. Andrew RT Davies makes clear his views on AV.6. Lastly, Shane Greer has stumbled across the trailer for Atlas Shrugged:

7PM What rights do prisoners have? Today the High Court blocked a compensation bid by prisoners who were complaining they hadn’t been given the right to vote. And also today, the segregation of two high profile Islamic terrorist prisoners accused of bullying and intimidating other prisoners over matters of faith was upheld as lawful. Why are prisoners allowed to bring these ridiculous cases to the courts? Of course we should treat prisoners fairly, but isn’t it up to the prison authorities how prisoners are housed? And why should the taxpayer provide legal aid to help convicted terrorists waste a court’s time?

8PM Beyonce’s gone white. Why do we want to change the way we look? Is it all to do with vanity? Or does it betray an inner unhappiness with our lives? Why do people have cosmetic surgery when it usually makes them look worse? Why do people dye their hair? Why can’t we be satisfied with the hand that nature dealt us? Why do so few of us have a positive self image?

8.30PM Have you ever tried to learn a second language? Was it a success or a complete failure?

9PM Opera: Are operas like Anna Nicole Smith & Jerry Springer dumbing down opera or is it making opera more accessible to the masses?

7PM The World Health Organisation has published a report which shows the average amount drunk in the UK is the 16th highest in the whole world. Is it time to admit that we’re a nation of drunks? And that we need to do something about it? Should we raise the drinking age to 21? Stop 24 hour drinking? Double the tax on alcohol? If you had to pick one policy to reduce our propensity to drink ourselves what would it be?

8PM We’re all excited about the Olympics, well some of us are, but if you can’t get a ticket would you buy one from a tout? Touts face fines of £5000 and substantial jail sentences if they’re caught. Which leads me to ask, what on earth is wrong with ticket touting? Have you ever bought from a tout? If you’re a tout yourself, do you fear these draconian punishments?

7pm: Parliamentary supremacy versus EHCR. Last week it was prisoners votes, this week it is responsible for preventing us keeping sex offenders on the sex offenders register for life. Is now the time to review our human rights laws? Should we withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and reassert our own parliamentary sovereignty? Guest: David Davis

8pm: 8PM What would you take to the streets over? Demonstrating and protesting seem to be in vogue at the moment. We’ve seen it over tuition fees, EMAs, the cuts, and in Egypt. Harriett Harman says today she wants us to take to the streets to make the government stand by it’s commitment to meet the 0.7% of GDP aid target. Would that get you out on the streets? Guest: Harriet Harman

Monday, February 14, 2011

1. Iain Martin want No to AV to hang Nick Clegg.2. Amol Rajan writes the unthinkable on universities. 3. Jackson Diehl looks at the upside of the Egyptian revolution.4. Nick Robinson has some interesting snippets from his Cameron interview.5. John Redwood shows the difference between weakness and flexibility.6. Alex Barker reports that David Davis is having a knees up.7. Charles Crawford wants Ministers to stop interfering in football.8. Will Horwitz reveals that Joanna Lumley has re-entered the political fray.9. Dan Hannan insists there are no net public sector cuts.10. Tim Aker is a libertarian, but doesn't support Ron Paul.11. Jeremy Browne explains why he supports the Big Society.12. Autonomous Mind wonders what happened to the old, Eurosceptic Hague.

7pm: Today saw the main campaign launch of the No to AV campaign. They want to keep the electoral system as it is. Will you vote No to AV/ If so why? Because you feel strongly on the subject or you want to give Nick Clegg a bloody nose? Why would we even think of voting for a system Nick Clegg called a miserable little compromise? Guest: Zac Goldsmith

8pm: A boss who frogmarched a thieving employee to a police station after discovering he had stolen £845 from the company has been forced to pay the crook £13,000 for 'humiliating him'. Are our law courts out of control? Have they lost any semblance of common sense? Can summary justice ever be appropriate? Guest: Priti Patel

Sunday, February 13, 2011

The latest edition of the Seven Days Show is now online. In the show this week (episode 59) we discuss Iain’s MoS article on the Lib Dems; Sally Bercow and that photo; whether multiculturalism has failed; would MPs really mock someone with a disability; prisoners votes; and whether something is wrong in football given recent transfer fees.

FOR 88 YEARS THE LIBDEMS YEARNED FOR POWER. NOW THEY'VE GOT IT, WHY ARE THEY SO MISERABLE? Iain Dale investigates, for the Mail on Sunday...

It’s been another difficult week for the Liberal Democrats. The acrimonious departure of the hyperactive Lord Oakeshott as LibDem their Treasury spokesman in the House of Lords was a classic example of how the LibDems are diminished by the self indulgence of some of their leading lights. He didn’t think the deal Vince Cable and George Osborne did with the bankers went far enough. So he flounced.

And then we had 130 LibDem councillors using vitriolic language to complain about the cuts the coalition is inflicting on local government - conveniently forget that one of the architects of those very cuts is their local government minister Andrew Stunell. Before he was elected as a LibDem MP Stunell was Political Secretary to the Association of the LibDem Councillors – the organisation that once advised LibDem politicians to “be wicked, act shamelessly.” No one can say that they didn’t take the advice. Their apparent concerns over cuts are more to do with saving their council seats at the election in May than genuine outrage.

But these examples of the difficulties LibDems are having, adapting to wielding power for the first time in 88 years, are far from isolated. They are symptomatic of a far wider problem in the party. And it is a problem they need to face up to if they are to escape political oblivion.A few days after the coalition was formed a Conservative minister was walking back to his ministerial office and passed the open door of his LibDem ministerial colleague. He glanced into the office and saw the minister, head in hands, almost sobbing. Enquiring as to what on earth was wrong, the Conservative was astonished to be faced with a tearful outburst about how making decisions was not what LibDems were put on this earth to do.

Eight months on, many LibDems seem incapable of understanding that being part of a national coalition government means not only having to make decisions, but standing by them. LibDem backbenchers and councillors don’t seem to get that it is their government too; that with power comes responsibility – collective responsibility.

Government is tough. Wielding power can sometimes be a dirty business. Ministers are often faced with the choice of the unacceptable or the unpalatable. To govern is to choose, as Charles de Gaulle once said. If you’re incapable of choosing, you’re incapable of governing. But it’s also about keeping your nerve ad keeping your eye on the greater goals.

Too many LibDems seem incapable of recognising that their 20 ministers face these decisions day after day. Those that cannot make a decision need to question why they are there at all. If they’re not in politics to wield power and change things, what is their reason for existing?Don’t get me wrong. Some LibDem ministers have taken to wielding power like ducks to water. Danny Alexander and Chris Huhne fit government like a hand fits a glove. But too many of their colleagues seem to believe they can cherrypick the government decisions they can bring themselves to support. Their attitude to the coalition’s more unpopular policies seems to be “nothing to do with us, guv, it’s those wicked Tories.” Collective responsibility doesn’t work like that.

That’s why David Cameron was happy to accede to Nick Clegg’s request for a LibDem minister in almost every government department. He knew it would bind them in, with no get out of jail free card.

All political parties are coalitions within themselves. No politician can ever agree with 100% of what their own political party does. But the LibDems have taken wearing their hearts on their sleeves to new extremes as they try to salve their collective consciences. And some of their major figures, who showed so much promise in opposition have struggled with real power and real responsibility.

Vince Cable’s influence has all but disappeared following his entrapment by two pretty journalists who persuaded him to unburden himself at his constituency surgery. He’s gone from being the second most influential LibDem to a political non-entity in the time it took for his ‘constituent’ to flutter her eyelashes.

Simon Hughes, the LibDem deputy leader, is the ultimate example of the rather unattractive tendency of LibDem politicians to wear their consciences on their sleeves. His public agonising over how to vote over tuition fees was nauseating to watch. And in true LibDem style, in the end he abstained.

The word ‘leadership’ is absent from his lexicon, although that is not an accusation which can be thrown at his leader, Nick Clegg.

“If you’re the leader of the third party, you have to be willing to take risks,” Clegg once told me. When he took his party into the coalition he took the mother of all risks, and provided clear, unassailable leadership. The country praised him for it. Even the doubters in his own party reckoned he had pulled off a remarkable coup in negotiating 20 ministerial posts. Surely they would be able to stamp their mark on the government in a way that would guarantee electoral success in the future?

Perhaps it is too early to make a judgement, but it isn’t turning out like that. Clegg seems a shadow of the ebullient and confident leader we saw during the election campaign. The “I Agree With Nick” phenomenon is all but a distant memory. He looks gaunt, complains of lack of sleep and is clearly struggling with his workload. He obsesses about issues like the alternative vote system and House of Lords reform which the electorate care little about and has failed to demonstrate what the LibDems have achieved in the coalition.

Yet he seems to base his future electoral strategy on the electorate rewarding the LibDems at the next election for being a moderating influence on the Conservatives.

It won’t work. Electorates rarely reward. They either punish a party for its incompetence and record or they vote for a party based on what they think it will do. The problem for Nick Clegg is that it will be difficult for him to differentiate himself from the Conservatives at the next election.Who would believe a manifesto pledge to abolish tuition fees, for example? It may even be best for the LibDems not to have a manifesto at the next election. What would be the point?

No one respects a party which regularly splits three ways in Commons votes. The LibDem party organisation is in turmoil. Money has dried up and the finances are so bad that they’re having to move out of their Westminster headquarters.

So, what to do? In short. they need to recover their ability to fight. When Paddy Ashdown learnt of Nick Clegg’s wish to lead the LibDem into the coalition he exclaimed “I may hate the Tories, by **** it, I’m with you.” The LibDems need more Ashdowns – people who are willing to follow their leader over the top and into battle, no matter how unwinnable it may seem.

It may seem a strange thing to say, but they need some John Prescotts. Prescott never fails to rally to the Labour cause. Who do the LibDems have? Ming Campbell and Charlie Kennedy? Neither can resist the temptation to stick the knife into the coalition, preferably in front of a TV camera.

The election may be four years away but the LibDems must be worried about their current trough in the opinion polls. Leaving the coalition is not an option, yet sticking with it almost guarantees hitting an electoral brick wall.

The question most politicos ask asking is a rhetorical one. Who’d be a LibDem nowadays?

Friday, February 11, 2011

1. Jonathan Isaby has the full breakdown of the Prisoner Voting vote.2. Ben Brogan thinks the Cameron has a growing problem, the new intake.3. Walaa Idris looks to the future in Egypt.4. His Grace upsets Mehdi Hasan.5. Mark Wallace is hopeful about the future of Euroscepticism.6. James Kirkup wonders what Sadiq Khan thinks of millionaire Miliband.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

1. Guido reveals the new Director of Communications.2. Alastair Campbell congratulates the Coalition.3. Iain Martin wants a return to Punch and Judy politics.4. Shamik Das has a preview of next week's Tim Montgomerie interview.5. Dan Hannan says don't call yourself a Eurosceptic, unless you want out.6. Eamonn Butler would like short answers only, please.7. Slugger O'Toole has a rather humorous email from Jeremy Paxman.8. Harry's Place is firmly against a fat tax.9. Bracknell Blog explains why he can no longer support the Coalition.10. Janet Daley thinks Sarah Palin is not a serious Presidential Candidate.11. Ben Brogan wants Cameron to lead, not follow.

12. And finally, a few pictures from Biteback at the Peter Sissons party.